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Is Bush a Big Spender?

March 20, 2006 1:26 pmMarch 20, 2006 1:26 pm

The idea that George W. Bush has been “spending like a drunken sailor” on domestic programs is in danger of becoming one of those factoids that everybody knows to be true, regardless of the evidence. (Sort of like the idea that John McCain, the third most conservative member of the Senate, is a moderate.) But the data just don’t support that claim.

Most of what you need to know is in the Congressional Budget Office’s historical budget data, //www.cbo.gov/budget/historical.pdf. From Table 6 we learn that overall federal spending rose from 18.5 percent of G.D.P. in fiscal 2001 (which basically reflected Bill Clinton’s budget) to 20.1 percent of G.D.P. in fiscal 2005, a rise of 1.6 percentage points. However, that somewhat understates the true spending increase, because it includes interest payments, which fell because of lower interest rates. Non-interest spending rose from 16.5 to 18.6 percent of G.D.P. — 2.1 percentage points.

But where did the money go? Table 8 gives us data on discretionary spending — spending that isn’t mandated by law. Defense and international spending rose from 3.2 to 4.3 percent of G.D.P., 1.1 percentage points. So that’s more than half the spending rise, right there.

Domestic discretionary spending rose from 3.2 to 3.5 percent of G.D.P. Conservatives make a big deal about this rise, but as you can see it’s fairly small in the context of the whole budget. And what you can’t read from these tables, but can infer from other C.B.O. reports, is that a significant part of the rise in domestic discretionary spending as a share of G.D.P. was really new spending on homeland security. So increases in non-security discretionary spending were a trivial factor in the overall rise in spending as a share of G.D.P., of which well over half – say 1.2 percentage points at least – was security-related.

On to health care: Table 10 tells us that combined spending on Medicare and Medicaid rose from 3.7 to 4.2 percent of G.D.P. Health care expenses for current and retired government employees also rose.

As you can see, there isn’t much left. The Bush domestic spending binge never happened.